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the simplification in English, effected by using invariable prepositions without inflection, is very great. It is just the same with the verb. Take the English regular verb "to love": the four forms love, loves, loving, loved, about exhaust the number of forms to be learned (omitting the second person singular, which is practically dead); the rest is done by auxiliaries, which are the same for each verb. Latin, on the other hand, possesses very numerous forms of the verb, and the whole set of numerous forms varies for each type of verb. In the aggregate the simplification in English is enormous. This process of simplification is common to all the modern Aryan languages, but they have not all made equal progress in carrying it out.

Now, it is a remarkable fact, and a very suggestive one for those who seek to trace the connexion between the course of a nation's language and its history, that the degree of progress made by the languages of Europe along their common line of evolution does on the whole, as a matter of historical fact, correspond with the respective degree of material, social, and economic advancement attained by the nations that use them. Take this question of case endings. Russia has retained a high degree of inflection in her language, having seven cases with distinct endings. These seven cases are common to the Slav languages in general; two of them (Sorbish and Slovenish) have, like Gothic and Greek, a dual number, a feature which has long passed away from the languages of Western Europe. Again, the Slav tongues decline many more of the numerals than most Aryan languages. Germany, which, until the recent formation of the German Empire, was undoubtedly a century slow by West European time, still has four cases; or, in view of the moribund dative, should we rather say three and a half? France and England manage their affairs in a universal nominative^[1] (if one can give any name to a universal case), as far as nouns, adjectives,